The Case of the Crime King

Chapter 23

Only a few moments after I hung up and returned to the room, the phone rang. Mrs. Burdette went to answer it.

We heard her say, “Hello.” There was a pause, then she said in a high, shaky voice, “Mr. Smith? Why... why, I don’t know if he’s here or not. What did you — I mean, wait till I see.”

I made the hall a hair ahead of Frank. Mrs. Burdette stood with the receiver still to her ear, looking toward me with a frightened expression on her face. I made a frantic gesture for her to drop the phone and walk away from it.

Instead she said in a piercing whisper, “It’s a call for Mr. Smith, Officer. What shall I—”

I was to her then, and had clapped a palm over the mouthpiece. I took the handset from her unresisting hand and put the receiver to my ear. The line was still open, but after a moment there was a click and I heard the dial tone.

I hung up slowly. Mrs. Burdette looked at me from stricken eyes. “I did that all wrong, didn’t I?” she said. “I gave you away.”

“It’s all right, ma’am,” I said.

She put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, I feel terrible. I said ‘Officer.’ He heard me, didn’t he?”

“It was a man, huh? Recognize his voice?”

She shook her head.

“Could it have been Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was just a man. I’ve spoiled everything, haven’t I?”

Frank said in a kindly tone, “This sort of thing isn’t something you’re used to, ma’am. Don’t worry about it. Could have happened to anybody.”

I left the job of soothing her feelings to Frank, while I dropped coins and dialed Madison 5-7911 again. A moment later I had Captain Peters.

“We had some bad luck, skipper,” I said. “A phone call came for the suspect a minute ago. The landlady answered the phone. She got rattled and accidentally gave away that the police were here. It may have been some guy who had no connection with the gang, but I doubt it.”

“Why?” he asked.

“An innocent caller would have asked what was up. This guy hung up.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” the captain agreed. “I’ve already sent a team after Big Julie and Strite. Let’s hope they get there before your caller tips them off. Or they may realize the jig is up and come out shooting.”

“With what?” I asked. “We’ve had their place shaken down often enough to know they haven’t got any guns at home.”

“Well, yeah. But they might make a break for it.”

“They staked out?” I asked.

“Had tails when they left here. With instructions to commit hara-kiri if they lost them.”

“One thing could make it bad,” I said.

“What?”

“If the caller was Big Julie or Strite.”

5:34 p.m. The reinforcements sent by Captain Peters arrived. Three men, all from Robbery Division, reported. They were Sergeant Brady, Sergeant Reed, and Officer Bently.

Brady told us that radio units were in place all around the block. He had brought a walkie-talkie with him so that we could be in constant communication with the outside stakeouts and get advance warning if the suspect approached the house. He had also brought along a disassembled riot gun and a mugg shot of Maurice Wey.

Mrs. Burdette identified the man in the mugg shot as the roomer she knew as Ralph Smith.

I assigned Reed and Bently to stay downstairs with Mrs. Burdette in her first-floor apartment. Her kitchen was at the end of a long hall that ran alongside the stairway, and the kitchen door faced the front door. By leaving the kitchen door slightly ajar, Reed and Bendy could see everyone who entered the house.

They were instructed to allow the suspect to go upstairs if he entered, then to move up and cover the stairway. They were not to attempt to take him, however. We would do that when he entered the room.

Sergeant Brady stayed in the room with us. Brady, one of the biggest men in Robbery Division, was the stand-in Howard J. McQuary had picked out at the show-up. He wasn’t quite so heavy as Big Julie, weighing only about two-thirty to Big Julie’s two-fifty, but his weight was so distributed that they seemed to be the same size.

While Brady was extending the aerial of his walkie-talkie and testing out its performance, I assembled the riot gun and loaded it. Brady seemed to be having some difficulty.

“Testing — one, two, three, four,” he kept saying, as he adjusted the antenna’s length and tried it in various parts of the room. He wasn’t getting any response.

“Don’t think it’s going to work with the antenna inside,” he finally decided.

He went over to the window, unhooked the screen, and removed it. Then he moved a chair next to the window, and sat in it with the instrument in his lap and the aerial protruding outside at an angle. He tested again, listened for a reply, and nodded in satisfaction.

“Okay,” he said into the speaker. “Receiving you at strength five.”

Frank said, “If he comes from the east and happens to glance in the areaway as he walks past, he could spot that antenna sticking out.”

“That’s easy,” Brady told him. “I’ll pull it in when he gets close.”

We were now all set. All we could do was sit back and hope that whoever had phoned had not been able to get a warning to Maury Wey.

6:18 p.m. We were still waiting. The outside stakeouts had twice alerted us when possibles had appeared in the area, but under closer observation both men had checked out not to be the suspect.

Suddenly Brady said, “Joe.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Skipper’s out there. Wants to talk to you.”

I was seated to one side of the door with the riot gun across my lap. I leaned it against the wall and crossed to the window. Brady handed me the earphone and mike.

“Friday,” I said.

“Peters, Joe,” the reply came. “Had some more bad luck.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Apparently that was Big Julie who phoned. Stakeouts spotted him making a call from a drugstore about that time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Drugstore right across from his flat. Then he went back home, he and Strite came out a minute later and jumped in a cab.”

“Before the arresting officers got there?”

“Yeah. The stakeout car tailed them, of course. Martin and Strite had the taxi take ’em to a car-rental service. Rented a new Plymouth. Drove around aimlessly for a few minutes — the stakeouts figure so they could spot the car tailing them. Then went to a pawnshop. Strite stayed in the car while Julie went in. Came out again after about five minutes. That’s when they took the stakeouts by surprise.”

“How’s that?”

“Made a U-turn and drove right by the stakeout car slow. As they passed, Big Julie shot out both front tires, then they took off like a breeze. Caught the officers flat-footed.”

“Where the devil did they get the gun?” I asked.

Captain Peters said, “That’s why the officers were caught short. Never expected them to be armed. This Big Julie is real cute.”

“Yeah?”

“He bought it in the pawnshop.”

Captain Peters said there was an APB and a local out on the suspects, but so far there were no leads. The rented car had already been found abandoned in North Hollywood.

“At least it’s out in the open now,” he said. “Once we land them, there won’t be any more fake-alibi stuff to beat.”

“If we land them,” I said.

Another voice suddenly cut in. “Excuse me, Captain. Young here, stakeout point number three. Possible approaching on foot.”

“I’ll check out,” Captain Peters said.

I said, “Okay, point three, we got the message,” and handed the speaker and earphone back to Brady.

About a minute and a half passed, with no sound except the occasional crackling of Brady’s earphone and grunted acknowledgments from him. Suddenly Brady drew the antenna inside and set the walkie-talkie on the floor.

“Just made positive identification,” he said. “It’s our pigeon.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Walking east on Franklin, this side of the street. He’s about fifty feet from the house.”

I went over and picked up the riot gun.